Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Jun 9 2005 (IPS) — The inclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and other countries out of favour with Washington on a blacklist of nations that sponsor or tolerate human trafficking has raised eyebrows among experts who believe the assessment reflects a policy of ”selective indignation”.

The U.S. State Department report divides countries into three ”tiers”. Tier 1 includes those that have met international standards for coping with trafficking and are vigorously addressing the problem, while Tier 2 comprises countries that demonstrate a commitment to address their problems but have not yet achieved international standards.

A country is branded ”Tier 3” – the worst of the worst – if it ”fails to take significant actions to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons”.

This year, 14 countries out of the 150 surveyed were classified as Tier 3: Bolivia, Ecuador, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Burma, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cambodia, Kuwait, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and Togo.

”Country ratings are based strictly on government actions to combat trafficking of persons as defined by U.S. law,” said John Miller, the State Department’s senior adviser on trafficking in persons, in an overview of the report, which was issued Jun. 3. ”The standards are set up by the Trafficking Victim Protection Act and are applied equally to every country.”

In the case of Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chávez has been at odds with Washington for several years, the report charges that ”the government funded no NGO (non-governmental organisation) programmes geared towards victims of trafficking” and that prevention efforts were ”inadequate”. It does not mention a single reported complaint in 2005.

But in a Jun. 3 statement challenging the report’s conclusions, the Venezuelan embassy cited ”640 community organisations through which thousands of people have been informed of the problem of human trafficking,” as well as joint operations by the Metropolitan Fire Department and the National Guard to monitor the frequency with which non-Venezuelan citizens go to motels, and ”increased scrutiny of documentation regarding those seeking to enter and exit the country.”

It concludes that the Tier 3 status is ”an example of either a profound lack of knowledge of what the government of Venezuela is doing,” or an ”intentional mischaracterisation of the good faith actions” it has taken.

The report’s section on Cuba, another U.S. nemesis, concedes that ”there are no reliable estimates available on the extent of trafficking in the country; however, children in prostitution (are) widely apparent, even to casual observers.”

This lack of concrete data has led some in the NGO community, including prominent groups like the Inter-American Dialogue and Human Rights Watch, to suspect that the Tier 3 list is shaped more by politics than reality.

”It’s pure snake oil,” said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based think-tank. ”The drug certification, human rights certification, terrorism and trafficking reports are all essentially political tools that the (George W. Bush) administration uses to voice selective indignation.”

”The purpose is to show that Venezuela is a failed state, making it a candidate for OAS (Organisation of American States) intervention. But what’s really noteworthy is that the administration doesn’t realise how isolated it is. The cumulative effect is to basically eradicate U.S. credibility.”

Sanctions against Tier 3 countries may include the withholding of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related aid, and U.S. opposition to assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, among other public lenders.

This year, Caracas plans to apply for a 250-million-dollar loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, and Washington has announced its intention to veto the request based on Venezuela’s Tier 3 ranking.

Janie Chuang, an international legal expert on trafficking issues who teaches at American University’s Washington College of Law, said in comments to IPS: ”In reviewing the country assessments, it’s difficult to glean meaningful standards for Tier placement and movement, at least from a human rights perspective.”

”How is it that Tier 1 includes countries that engage in the arrest, jailing, and fining of trafficking ‘victims’? Or countries that fail to distinguish between smuggling and trafficking, and end up simply deporting trafficked persons rather than affording them the human rights protections they deserve?”

”I think increased attention to labour trafficking is a significant improvement in the report,” she said, adding, ”but the Middle Eastern countries don’t have a monopoly on this form of trafficking. The country assessments across the board need to include more information regarding government efforts to address labour trafficking.”

The International Labour Organisation said in a study released in May that at least 12.3 million people are trapped in forced labour around the world, and that of these, the study estimates a minimum of 2.4 million to be victims of human trafficking.

"It’ll be interesting to see which countries actually end up under trafficking sanctions," said Chuang. She noted that so far the countries the United States has actually targeted for sanctions tend to be ones with which it has no relationship or at best a strained relationship, like Burma, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Venezuela.

Other activists question the wisdom and effectiveness of a heavy-handed approach.

”Sanctions are not the effective way to solve problems,” said Anuradha Koirala, head of Maiti Nepal, an anti-trafficking group. ”It would be better if the monitoring mechanism is improved.”

No one disputes that the problem of global trafficking for forced labour and sex work is pervasive and horrendous. According to U.S. government data, of the 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children trafficked across international borders each year, about 80 percent are women and girls and half are minors.

The majority of these transnational victims are condemned to commercial sexual exploitation, and this number does not even include the millions of victims around the world who are trafficked within their own national borders.

”I think what has been largely omitted in the report is the economic situation of the Latin American countries, which is the main cause for the trafficking in persons,” said Teresa Ulloa Ziaurriz, the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

”But it’s not only poverty. It’s a poverty that is preyed upon by recruiters, traffickers and pimps,” she said. ”And it is both local and foreign demand for the sex of prostitution which promotes the market for victims of trafficking.”

Human trafficking is the third most profitable illicit activity in the world, just after the trafficking of drugs and weapons, Ziaurriz added.

”It is the demand that perpetuates stereotypes of submission and inferiority of women, considered as merchandise that could be sold, bought or rented for the sexual pleasure of men,” she said. ”The demand for sexual tourism in Mexico and Latin America is 80 percent from the U.S. and Canada.”

”I strongly believe that the rich countries should contribute to generate welfare and investment for development in the poor countries, and there is a need of technical cooperation with the organisations like mine, with a long career in combating prostitution and trafficking in women and children in the Latin American and Caribbean region.”